A Novel Without Characters

Rachel Cusk's lonely experiment: Parade. Her new book, a novel of elusive vignettes, it can be seen as an allegory about both fiction and the gendered shapes of selfhood.

- By Nicholas Dames

Start, as one tends to do in Rachel Cusk’s writing, with a house. It is not yours, but instead a farmhouse on the island property to which you have come as a renting vacationer. It has no obvious front door, and how you enter it, or whether you are welcome to do so, isn’t clear. You are, after all, only a visitor. Built out in haphazard fashion, the house seems both neglected and fussed over, and as a result slightly mad. A small door, once located, opens to reveal two rooms. The first, although generously proportioned and well lit, shocks you with its disorder, the riotous and yet deadening clutter of a hoarder. As you navigate carefully through it, the sound of women’s voices leads you to a second room. It is the kitchen, where the owner’s wife, a young girl, and an old woman—three generations of female labor—prepare food in a clean and functional space. When you enter, they fall silent and seem to share a secret. They consent to rather than encourage your presence, but here you will be fed. Of the first room, the owner’s wife comments dryly that it is her husband’s: “I’m not allowed to interfere with anything here.”